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‘Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert’: Reconsidering ironic kinship in Neill Blomkamp’s science fiction film Chappie: Original Research
Get PDFNeill Blomkamp’s 2015 science fiction film Chappie engages with the familiar narrative trope of robot sentience. Blomkamp confronts viewers with a naïve and vulnerable childlike robot protagonist that is more human and likeable than any of the stilted and stereotypical real human characters in the film. It is the mechanical creature with which the viewer readily identifies and sympathises. Blomkamp facilitates, not only between his characters, but also with the audience, a kinship of the sort that Donna Haraway in Staying with trouble c alls a ffinity g roups o r a ssemblages o f ‘ oddkin’. T he i mmediately sympathetic response of the viewing audience to the mechanical robot is a key strategy in the way that Blomkamp applies irony in this film, which Haraway also identifies as central to her idea of the cyborg as an alternative and potentially liberatory myth. In this article, I engage in a close reading of the film, focusing on the broad network of speculative and science fiction narrative traditions within which this film operates. I consider possible reasons why the film was misread and met with criticism when it was first released. I also specifically investigate the strategies and techniques Blomkamp uses in his depiction of the robot character and how his use of its childlikeness and vulnerability and its engagement with violence and sacrifice are central to the film’s ironic engagement with the central argument about the dangers of dehumanisation and the need to recuperate humaneness
Book Review: Expanded visions: A new anthropology of the moving image
No full textIn Expanded visions: A new anthropology of the moving image, Arnd Schneider draws on a wide range of time-based media commonly used in contemporary art but not often used in anthropology to propose a new anthropology of the moving image. Schneider takes his cue from Gene Youngblood’s influential Expanded cinema (1970), which opened up new debates in experimental film and the then-emerging moving image media. Schneider argues that, owing to current developments in moving image practices, an expanded anthropology of vision is now required. Therefore, this book is situated in what Schneider refers to as a ‘third space’ (1), which is opened up by new moving image practices currently used in contemporary art and experimental film. The author argues that by thinking with experimental approaches to art and film, visual anthropologists and ethnographers can incorporate innovative techniques to overcome the realist-naturalist paradigm that still tends to dominate anthropological research and representation
Soul searching : finding space for the soul in the New Digital Age
Get PDFWithin the context of the New Digital Age, is there still space to explore the phenomenon of the soul? The soul is often omitted in the philosophical discourse of technology and its impact on being human, owing to the (mis)conceptualisation of the soul as an outdated, western notion that is no longer applicable or significant in contemporary society and global culture. Throughout this article, I counter this argument by showing that an exploration of the soul in a technologicallydriven society remains significant, since it reveals pivotal aspects of being human in contemporary society that could not have been highlighted otherwise. I maintain that the soul deserves consideration within the New Digital Age, since it allows us to think about being human in relation to technology in a unique manner, uncovering promising ideas as well as critical forewarnings. I also show that the soul is a culturally universal notion that enables a global discussion. By exploring visual culture examples (namely her, artworks by Aleksandra Mir and Wit) that represent various perspectives on the soul within a technological society, I contend that visual culture opens up a space for discussion on the soul in the New Digital Age
The viability of social design as an agent for positive change in a South African context:: Mural painting in Enkanini, Western Cape
Get PDFThe aim of this article is to highlight some of the issues that handicap the success and viability of communitybased design projects that aim to negotiate positive social change in South Africa through social and inclusive design processes. Using a case study methodology, we focus on a community mural project recently executed in Enkanini, a township outside Stellenbosch in the Western Cape. The project, implemented by Andrew Breitenberg, an American artist currently living in South Africa, together with a group of Dutch volunteers, was called These three remain. By investigating how the project negotiates, or fails to negotiate, sustainable social change in practice, we construe possible reasons for the project’s outcomes with the aim of improving the viability of social design practice as a change agent in social design projects throughout South Africa. In this case study, aspects of South African social design practice are discussed, without skirting around issues that may be hard for designers to deal with when confronted with the reality of social politics in South Africa. We argue that there is a need for a critical consideration of the unquestioned optimism and often romanticised prospects that are linked to such projects.
Bracha Ettinger: off (hors) figures
Get PDFBracha Ettinger off (hors) figures: a paper on the work of visual artist, philosopher, and theoretician of French feminist psychoanalysis, Bracha L . Ettinger. Ettinger has held recent solo exhibitions at the Historical Museum of St. Petersburg, Peter and Paul Fortress (2013); Museum of Fine Arts (Beaux-arts), Angers (2011); Tapies Foundation, Barcelona (2011), and the Freud Museum, London (2009). Recent group exhibitions include those at the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2013-2014) and the Pompidou Centre, Paris (2010-2011). She is author of Matrix. Halal(a) - Lapsus, MOMA Oxford (1993) and The matrixial borderspace, University of Minnesota Press (2006). Two volumes of her selected writings (Matrixial subjectivity) are soon to be published by Palgrave-Macmillan.
Trauma and fragilisation: Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger’s artistic ethics, cultural memory, and post-apartheid South Africa
Get PDFIn this article, I argue that a consideration of South African art should have an ethical dimension, which takes into account the trauma of apartheid and the country’s deep-lying legacy of race hate and discrimination. An example of how this can be achieved is provided by the work of artist, theorist and psychoanalyist, Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger. In both her artistic output and her psychoanalytic theory, Ettinger offers a model of ethically engaging with traumatic cultural memory through an encounter between artist, artwork and viewer. I use the recent example of vitriolic popular response to Brett Murray’s artwork The Spear (2012) to illustrate the necessity of an ethical response to trauma in South Africa’s case.
Zanele Muholi Colloquium, 24 March 2014
Get PDFThe South African photographer and self-described ‘visual activist’ Zanele Muholi has been gaining recognition across the globe since presenting her first exhibition, Visual Sexuality, in 2004 at the Johannesburg Art Gallery. Since then, Muholi\u27s work has featured in numerous exhibitions including the 29th São Paulo Biennial in Brazil (2010); Figures and Fictions: Contemporary South African photography at the V&A Museum in London (2011) and Lesbians Seeing Lesbians at the Leslie/Lohman Gallery in New York (2011).
The right to democratic participation in Africa in the era of deepfake
Get PDFIn theory, the right to democratic participation in Africa is safeguarded by an array of international and regional human rights instruments, such as article 13 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. In essence, the right entails the genuine freedom of people to participate in government and to vote freely, without coercion, intimidation, or deception. In recent times, there has been a growing concern about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the enjoyment of human rights. Deepfake, a relatively new concept, is one of such AI-controversy. Recently, scholars have considered the impacts of deepfakes on different areas of law, such as intellectual property, torts and evidence. In human rights discourse, discussions on deepfake have focused particularly on the right to dignity and privacy. But in fact, the right to information is probably the human right most endangered by deepfake. This article seeks to underscore that there is a concerning impact on the right to democratic participation. First, the article shows the interdependence and interrelation between the right to democratic participation and the right information. Thereafter, it argues that the right to information makes sense only when seen as ‘the right to truth’. Further, it argues that deepfake interferes with the ‘freely’ component of the right to democratic participation in that it disturbs and distorts information necessary for the electorates to freely participate in government. The article notes the little response from African states despite the call from the African Commission to establish a framework for human rights in the use of AI and emphasises the importance of partnership with technology companies in addressing the problem. Other recommendations made include the need to educate the electorates on deepfakes and the formulation of law and policy compatible with the African Charter in addressing the problem
Learning about World War Two:: Group work discussions and literary engagement using Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief
No full textThis article presents the findings of a generic qualitative research study that investigated 20 pre-service teachers’ experiences and perspectives of a group worksheet discussion in a third-year English literary studies module that is part of a Bachelor of Education degree in Intermediate Phase teaching. The participants were interviewed, both individually and in focus groups, and their assessment tasks were analysed. The task was based on the novel, The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak. The academic essay is the dominant form of both formative and summative assessments in many academic disciplines, but especially in literary studies. This is problematic in some ways as most students who enter university do not speak English as their first language and generally struggle with expressing their ideas in academic writing. Additionally, many students do not have sufficient knowledge of history, and group work can supplement historical knowledge gaps that students may have. I argue that group work is underused in English literary studies modules. The findings of this research indicated that group work discussions can facilitate collaborative, inquirybased and problem-based learning to advance knowledge of history that facilitates skills development in literary studies. These skills include close reading, textual analysis and disciplinary content knowledge
Reading the African School Curriculum as an Historical Text:: Educational contexts, policies and practices in Zimbabwe
No full textThe current research is a critical rendition of the history of the African school curriculum in Zimbabwe. The paper explores how this curriculum manifested itself from colonial times to the present post-colonial dispensation. Methodologically, we adopt a Kliebardian historical approach to an understanding of the purpose and changing nature of education through a study of the history of education. The study posits that a curriculum may be read through a vertical analysis of changes over time as shaped by varying contexts, policies and practices associated with its development. Thus, the curriculum under review is an historical text. The main conclusions drawn from the study are that in Rhodesia, curriculum goals, content, methods and assessment strategies were crafted to serve the needs of the dominant European group, while African education was perennially under-funded. The post-colonial curriculum was, and is still expected to exorcise the erstwhile colonial elitist educational jinx to serve the needs of the African majority. Regrettably, however, it has been saddled with challenges such as policy and ideological inconsistencies, as well as inadequate financial resources to support change and innovation. We (the authors), therefore, see the study as providing a basis for a critical scrutiny and understanding of the history and purpose of education in Zimbabwe and ipso facto, its possible improvement